The Kid's Aren't Alright
by blissfully ignorant
Summary: The Bauldilares and Quagmires have grown up, but their tragic pasts have led them to some hellish futures.
1. strange angel

~a/n: this is another one that's been killing me. I got this idea while on a bus and staring out the window into the night, at least two months ago, and as I got off another bus today I only now feel ready to share it. It's also like my last story *see "Kamikaze"* in the sense that some people might not approve of the portrayal of the main character. I hope you approve, though.  
  
S t r a n g e A n g el  
  
The day after the night that changed my life, I read about her death in the newspaper. A young woman, no older than twenty, jumped to her death off of a hotel roof. She was unidentified as of yet, but I knew exactly who she was.  
  
I met her on the bus, when she sat next to me. I was smartly dressed- expensive looking black business suit, sensible shoes, and obligatory smug look of a stock market wiz in the making. She, however, had chosen to attire herself in a midriff baring violet shirt, almost nonexistent black skirt, and attention-getting makeup. Her face was adorned with all the beautiful tragedy of a harlequin clown and her eyes were dull and lifeless.  
  
She sat right next to me in the back, despite the fact that the entire bus was empty. I was reading the Wall Street Journal by the streetlights outside the window and shooting looks at her out of the corner of my eyes.  
  
"Is there something I can help you with?" she asked.  
  
If I were a shy man, or at least a sensible one, I would have shaken my head and snuck my glances more carefully. But this was before my life changed, and I was still the brash only child of a rich family. "I was wondering how anyone could let their life get away from them like that."  
  
"Like what?" she countered. Her accent was strange, British mixed with the harsh tones of life on the New York streets.  
  
"How does a woman go from someone's daughter, someone's granddaughter, and someone's best friend to being little more than someone's cheap thrill?"  
  
She stared off far, her eyes glazing over. "It gets away from you. No one ever likes to think of themselves as a whore, or an addict, or even a bad person. I'm not Sunny Bauldilare anymore, youngest of a family that was destined for misery. I'm just Sunshine, or Daisy, or whatever I'm needed to be at the time."  
  
I stared at her. I hadn't spent much time in the city, but I'd met my fair share of prostitutes, but none of them ever seemed to have a soul. All they ever wanted was money for their various addictions and whatever else. And yet here was one such young woman, bearing her soul trustingly to a rich stranger on the bus.  
  
"No one wants to end up like this, you know," she continued. "At one point I was going to be a chef, and live out a happy life with my own little restaurant. I never thought that this was what I would degenerate into."  
  
I looked at the floor, guilt rising in me like the swelling of some ghastly balloon in the pit of my stomach. All my life things had been handed to me, and it felt wretched to hear what her life had become for her. I felt sick, disgusted with myself.  
  
I finally forced myself to look up at her. She was crying, but smiling through her tears as the bus rolled to a stop.  
  
I wanted to say something to her as she rose to leave. "Wait," I said.  
  
She turned. "What, were you planning to render my services for the evening?"  
  
I opened and closed my mouth several times, but something in her eyes made each word shrivel and die in my throat. I squeezed her hand and found myself stammering "good luck."  
  
She smiled sincerely, and a dim sign of life shone in her eyes. "Thank you. You too."  
  
She left. Something in that look changed me, made me care. I may give up my ideas of stock trading and try to become a doctor. You know, help people. I may not, though. I may just give a little bit, everyday, and hope for the best.  
  
Someone next to me just said it was a shame about that whore who offed herself. I don't think she was a whore. Me, I think she was an angel sent to put me on the right track, and she was going home. 


	2. thunder gods

~a/n: I've been writing a lot of very slightly unusual fics of late, and I see no need to break suit now. Instead, I feel the need to continue this atrocious atrocity. Remember, I don't do this for me, I do it for you because I care. Good lord how I care.  
  
T h u n d e r G o d s  
  
"This it?" the man asked. He was tall and skinny, his black hair shading dark eyes and a face aged beyond his years.  
  
"Yes," I said, and handed him my library card.  
  
He gave me a strained, tired smile. I'd seem this man at the library since I was six, when I used to look at picture books with my mother. His name was Klaus, a name I had always loved to say.  
  
"You have an overdue fine on that Agatha Christie book you borrowed last week."  
  
I relinquished 50 cents to him and made to pick up my books as thunder ripped through the sky. The window behind him flashed periodically with the lightening, backlighting this sad young man in a way most alarming.  
  
He sat back on the little stool and picked up a small book. I was about to leave when suddenly the power cut out.  
  
"Oh drat," he said mildly, and I heard the soft sound of his book being laid against the desk. With a click a flashlight came on behind her and she turned, shading her eyes.  
  
"It's getting dark-perhaps you shouldn't walk home alone." He handed me an old telephone with a smile. "Try calling."  
  
I did try, three times, all three with no success. I handed the telephone down to where he sat wedged in the corner reading his book with one of two library flashlights. I sat next to him behind the counter and opened my own book.  
  
For the first time, I noticed things about him, things that ten years of library patronage hadn't told me. He was dressed shabbily, and I got the feeling he had given up trying to make a good impression on anyone. There was he was reading a book of poetry by a woman called Isadora Quagmire with a pained look on his face.  
  
"What's wrong?" I asked. He seemed to be enjoying the book about as much as a pulled tooth.  
  
"I don't remember you at all like this, Isadora," he said.  
  
"You knew her?"  
  
"Yes, we met at a boarding school I attended once. But I remember her couplets on a much more...pleasant note. Before they reminded me of some pleasant, rhyming children's books, but now they're more like something Plath would write."  
  
Having done a term paper on Sylvia Plath, I knew what a transition that was. I also remember, with a sick feeling, that Plath had committed suicide at the age of thirty.  
  
"Of course, Plath killed herself," the librarian noted, almost like he was reading my thoughts, "which worries me quite a bit about Isadora. Good Lord, but I was fond of her."  
  
I found it hard to imagine Klaus as being fond of anything you couldn't stick a bookmark in, but nodded. "Have you tried contacting her?"  
  
He shook his head. "I've thought about it, but she's probably settled down with a husband and children. We knew each other at a sort of stressful time, and after reading this I'm afraid of dredging up any of the horrible memories. But maybe someday I will. Maybe someday." His eyes took on a distant, far-off look as the lightening flashed overhead. In that moment I didn't feel I was looking at him, but looking through him. To me he felt like a ghost, the reminder of someone who was already dead. It was very alarming to sit next to him as he smiled thinly at me.  
  
"Of course, you've got better things to do than listen to a crazy librarians ranting on about how they've screwed up there lives. All you've probably learned from this is to never come to this library again." He laughed, but there wasn't much joy in it.  
  
Thunder clapped, and his eyes reflected the lightening. I looked back down at my book, but found myself unable to get beyond the first sentence of "The Mousetrap".  
  
"You might want to try home again," he said after reading a bit more. "And if not then I can give you a ride home."  
  
I called once more, and my mother told me she was on the way to pick me up.  
  
"Goodbye," he said, fixing his exhausted smile on me once more.  
  
"Goodbye," I murmured, unable to look at his face. I forced myself to meet his eyes, and as I heard my mother's car horn outside the library I knew I would never see him alive again.  
  
The next day the newspaper blamed the weather for his death, but I knew he had not driven his car off the bridge on accident. I was the only one but the local priest to show at his funeral, and after they finished piling the fresh earth on a premature grave I knelt and made a promise.  
  
Then, I went home and wrote a letter to Isadora Quagmire. 


End file.
